Natalja's Stories

by Inger Christensen

From one of Denmark’s most revered authors, a startlingly original novel about a migrant’s fate, told across several generations

This is the story of a young woman who is spirited away to St. Petersburg from Copenhagen by a lovestruck admirer. When she dies after the Revolution, her ashes are carried back to Denmark, igniting a chain reaction of further stories, told and retold by the women in her family against a shifting ground of meaning. We meet murderers and fable-like characters, such as the hilarious and unsettling Viktor Blanke, who manages to seduce not one but three generations of mothers and daughters. Natalja, we discover, cannot be held in one place. Rather than giving in to the tragedy that befalls her, she wills herself to become someone else, reinventing her family’s narrative one irresistible tale at a time.

Tantalizing and full of wit, this remarkable, shape-shifting novel is available in English for the first time.

Translated by Denise Newman

Genres: Fiction, Scandinavian Literature, Short Stories, Danish, Novella, Denmark, Literary Fiction

66 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 10, 2017

About the author

Inger Christensen was born in Vejle, Denmark, in 1935. Initially she studied medicine, but then trained as a teacher and worked at the College of Art in Holbæk from 1963–64. Although she has also written a novel, stories, essays, radio plays, a drama and an opera libretto, Christensen is primarily known for her linguistically skilled and powerful poetry.

Christensen first became known to a wider audience with the volumes "Lys" (1962; Light) and "Græs" (1963; Grass), which are much influenced by the modernistic imagery of the 60s, and in which she is concerned with the location of the lyric "I" in relation to natural and culturally created reality. The flat, regular landscape of Denmark, its plants and animals, the beach, the sea, the snow-filled winters have determined the topography of many of her poems. Christensen has also been known internationally since the appearance of the long poem "Det" (1969; "it" 2006), a form of creative report on the merger of language and the world, which centres around the single word "it" and covers more than two hundred pages. The book clearly reveals the influence on Christensen's poetic work of such a range of authors as Lars Gustafsson, Noam Chomsky, Viggo Brøndal, R.D. Laing and Søren Kierkegaard. The analogy between the development of poetic language and the growth of life is, as in "Det", also the basic motif of the volume of poetry "Alfabet" (1981; Alphabet). In addition to the alphabet itself – which gives the book its title and provides a logical arrangement for its fourteen sections –, the structure is generated by the so-called Fibonacci series, in which every number consists of the sum of the preceding two. The composition reflects the theme exactly: while "Det" points to the story of creation and its "In the beginning was the Word", here the alphabet is a pointer to the "A and O" of the apocalypse.

The story of her life and work offers access to a poetry that is difficult and enigmatic, but simultaneously simple and elementary. Inger Christensen is one of the most reflecting, form-conscious poets of the present day, and her history of ideas also provides information on the paradox of lyric art; making legible through poetic means what must necessary remain illegible, and in this way wrestling a specific order from the universal labyrinth. Here the transitions between the poet and the essayist Christensen are fluid: just as lyrical figures and motifs give her essays a density of their own, figures of thought and configurations of ideas return as an organic component of the poems.

Reviews

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novella composed of seven chapters that read like interlinked stories that seem to tell various tales by a woman named Natalja—or maybe not. Images and themes recur throughout, taking on different shades. Who is the Natalja? A Danish woman living in Paris, a French woman who wants to escape her identity, or a writer writing her own or someone else's stories? As with her novella Azorno, the experience of reading Christensen's fiction is akin to wandering through a maze or a hall or mirrors (or both). It's best to let go and enjoy getting lost in her world where meanings shift continually and simply marvel at the connections that appear when you least expect them.
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2025/06/22/th...

[Alanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

What did I just read and why do I already need to reread it

[Nathália · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kind of genius?

Ended up rereading it 2 weeks later and having to bow down to it and state its power.

5 stars, deservingly.

[Fiona W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deceptively simple on a sentence level - it’s actually so confusing.

[emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Estrany però molt molt molt bo. T'has de deixar portar. Sobre els relats que ens construeixen. El final és boníssim! Gràcies Joana!

«But why hide the fact that only Mirage the cat holds the big picture of this story and thereby knows its correct imperceptible beginning, while I am obliged to pick and choose between random sentences that say nothing to me because I'm unable to see where in the story they belong?» p. 49

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

genuinely would love to reread this when I’m not in a slump because that was deviously confusing yet genius

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

When it takes longer to summarize what you just read than it took to read what you just read, you know that some flavor of magic took place. What starts off with a short story, slightly bereft in the ways of momentum, decorum, and tone, quickly branches into an anomaly hunt, and what you read two pages ago continually morphs into a near-unidentical version of itself. If all the oases turn out to be watering holes, were you ever walking through a desert?

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hot damn.

[Enkhtamir · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really sort of fascinating nested novella, seven stories that seem to pull you one way, then leave you doubting yourself and the narrator. Really interesting writing and unique imagery, I wanted to reread it as soon as I finished it. Translated fiction always takes me to new places :)

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

She’s so smart.

Every bit was done with tongue in cheek and I desperately need more people to read her work.

[Ken Fredette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inger Christensen writes in the third person but Natalja could be someone else as she describes in the story. We saw what happened to her mother who was to be brought back to Copenhagen by her daughter after her death. We also know about her cat that lived on liver and lived with Badinot when hewn to jail. It was a interesting story that leaves you thinking what did this mean?

[Bea Moritz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cyclical familial mythology of sacred tokens and memories. Very uncanny and cool. Short enough to be tantalizing but also be a bit detached from the world.

[stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

love being confused love going off of vibes only yes yes yes

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seven interconnected and mutually contradictory stories. The first couple of stories were a bit underwhelming, but each new story adds to the complexity and confusion.

[Melissa Reddish · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic little book! Part Decameron, Part Thousand and One Nights, part exquisite corpse, all sprinkled with surreal Danish imagery. Spend an afternoon reading this

[Andy Khan-Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

If David Lynch was a Danish poet...

[Ocean Chamberlain · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was nervous to read this one by Christensen after being so blown away by her other novella The Painted Room, but the anxiety was unfounded. Natalja’s Stories is brilliant, but even better than it being brilliant, it’s playful. I think knowing a little more about Christensen’s background, it’s perhaps also a series of experiments in literary theory and philosophy. Someone more focused than I am could probably come to some very precise conclusions between this book and some of the stuff Lacan wrote in Ecrits, but that’s just a lot of words from me. What I’m trying to say is that I can’t really imagine someone not enjoying this book but if you’re into psychoanalysis or literary theory, you’ll probably find it very intellectually stimulating and all those brain synapses firing will give you a lot of pleasure. I’ll be trekking through her oeuvre for the foreseeable future, should I remain so lucky.

[Helen Castle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is this a novel or a collection of 7 interlinked stories? It’s somewhere between the two. It starts with the tale of Natalja’s grandmother and how she travelled all the way from Crimea to Denmark to bury her mother. We’re expecting a series of intergenerational tales. But that’s not what we’re served up! In each story the viewpoint and sense of reality gets jilted, until by the end we’re unable to vouch for the true Natalja and her life story.

Here brevity is the answer, as we stay with it until the end.

[mia moraru]

mostly wanted this to be over, then the murder story was intriguing, then i laughed when there was another story within the story of the story that was pretty clever, then my head hurt at how vertiginously circuitous it was for a hot sec, accepted its absurdity so i could be over with it, and then was unsurprisingly unsatisfied by the end. pretty unlikeable characters.

[Alejandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Even though this is a very short read, I had to give up halfway through because I just had no idea who was narrating, who it was about, and what was happening. I could not connect with any character, and the story did not peak my interest in the least.
Life is short and I have so many more books to read.
On to the next one.

[Ifa · Rating 4 out of 5]

woooooww this was so impressive! the stories keep shifting depends on whoever tells it.
hot take: the best thing to do is just follow wherever this woman’s storytelling takes you, before you know it, you’re completely lost in her mind 🤯

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding play with form and ideas; add it to the pile of 'dream logic' books that I found worthwhile, except more than worthwhile, I found it exceptionally good, and instead of a pile, it's really just this book.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A playful and experimental ode to storytelling and family mythologies.

[Cloglover · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concentric circles, around and around and around. A great way to spend an hour and a half.

[Tatiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

pulls you along in all the retelling

[Ruth]

I don’t understand anything I just read. It wasn’t bad though?

[Elli Flitton · Rating 2 out of 5]

that was odd and I’m very confused

[Natalia Valeria · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately absolutely not for me. The confusion from the narrator perspective threw me off and did make the reading experience rather unenjoyable

[Am A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just continue? Truly I didn’t really get what was happening…